Christmas shopping

Jerry Wolfrom / Columnist Published: December 17, 2012 1:00 PM

The Christmas shopping season is barely under way and already I'm burned out. Well, actually, I haven't been shopping yet this year. I'm just burned out thinking about it.

My aversion to shopping was strengthened over the weekend when a friend said she was in a major department store and there was an estimated 150 customers lined up around the store waiting to check out.

I don't know many men who really like to spend an entire day shopping. Guys who hate trawling the crowded stores now have the perfect excuse to stay at home because. experts say women are much better than men at finding their way around stores and locating merchandise.

Women excel at remembering the location of fruit, vegetables and high-calorie treats. Men step inside a store, are totally overwhelmed, then head for the nearest bench, finding support from other bored males who'd rather be home watching Gunsmoke re-runs.

Researchers say the phenomenon has its roots deep in evolution, in the activities of our forebears. While men developed the acute sense of direction needed for hunting, women mastered the art of gathering food such as fruits and berries.

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Researchers say these traits have been passed down, meaning men are better at reading maps while women excel at shopping. To test their theory, they sent 86 men and women on a trip around a large farmers' market.

Each was given a list of stalls to visit and foods to sample. They were then asked how much they liked the foods and to map out the locations of the stalls they had visited.

The women were much more accurate in remembering the stalls' positions. Further analysis revealed that their memories were influenced not by how much they liked the foods but by the number of calories they contained.

Foods with a high calorie count, such as almonds, olive oil and honey, were remembered better than vegetables and other foods which provide less energy for their size.

Researchers believe this is further evidence of an evolutionary origin as our ancestors would have needed to memorize the location of the foods that would give the most energy.

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"The finding that nutritional quality enhances spatial memory further supports the idea that our task is engaging a foraging-related spatial adaptation," researchers said.

Men, they noted, tend to be better at map-reading -- a skill honed through "pursuing mobile prey over erratic and unpredictable courses."

British experts say our hunter-gatherer ancestors offer a key to explain women's preference for pink. Psychologists said it was likely women honed an ability to pick out the colors when foraging for ripe fruits.

I don't know how much of this research to believe, but it makes for interesting reading.

All I can say is, if my kids and grandkids are reading this, the check's in the mail.